
            Toledo, 1808, a Spanish city occupied by French Napoleonic troops. A firing squad executes a small group of Spanish rebels who cry out Down with liberty! or Long live chains! The troops are encamped in a Catholic church which they desecrate by drinking, singing, and eating the communion wafers. The captain caresses a statue of a medieval woman and is knocked unconscious by her husband (a knights funerary statue). In revenge, the captain exhumes the body of the wife to find her face has not decomposed; there is a suggestion of intended necrophilia.Cut to the present day where a nanny is reading the voice-over from a book whilst seated on a park bench. The children in her care are given some pictures by a strange man in the park; there are implications of child abduction or pedophilia. Cut to a close-up of a spider and the interior of a bourgeois apartment where a man is fed up with symmetry as he rearranges his mantelpiece. The children arrive home and show the pictures to their parents who are shocked that the girls have such images. The parents are disgusted and yet erotically stimulated by the images which we assume to be pornographic when we see the images, they are revealed as picture postcards of architecture (there is a satirical nod towards Freudian symbolism in the images of tunnels and columns). The parents then let the children keep the pictures and dismiss the nanny. At bedtime, the husband cant sleep as he is woken in the night by a cockerel, a postman and an emu wandering through his bedroom.In the next scene, the husband visits his doctor, who dismisses these nighttime experiences as apparitions despite the fact that the husband has physical evidence in the form of a letter from the nocturnal postman. The evidence is never considered as the doctors nurse interrupts the conversation to tell her employer that she must visit her sick father. The nurse drives through a rainy night, meeting a military tank on the road that is apparently hunting foxes. The soldiers tell her that the road ahead is blocked; the nurse drives to an isolated hotel.A storm breaks as the nurse checks in at the small rural hotel. Some Carmelite monks are also staying at the hotel. She takes supper in her room while a flamenco dancer and guitarist perform in an adjacent room. The monks interrupt her as she is dressing for bed. They offer to use a holy effigy and prayer to assist her sick father, they begin to pray. Time has passed and the monks are playing a game of poker with the nurse and the hotel manager, gambling with holy relics, smoking and drinking alcohol.That same night, some new guests arrive at the hotel; a young man and his aunt. The young nephew has brought his aunt to the hotel for an incestuous affair yet another sexual taboo is addressed. They retire to their room, the elderly aunt confesses that she is a virgin, when the nephew pulls back the sheets to look at her naked body; she has the body of a young woman. The nephew is refused by his aunt and leaves his room to join another couple (a hatter and his female assistant) for a drink. The nurse and the four monks are also invited into the hatters room. While the guests are socialising, the hatters assistant dons a dominatrix outfit with a whip. The hatter, who is wearing bottomless trousers, proceeds to be masochistically flagellated by his assistant in front of the other guests who are shocked and leave. The nephew returns to his aunt, who is now willing to make love with him.The next morning, the nurse leaves for the town of Argenton, giving a lift to another resident who is breakfasting in the bar. This resident is a professor at the police academy. He is dropped off at work where he gives a lecture to a class of delinquent policemen on the subject of the relativism of laws, customs and taboos. The lecture is constantly interrupted until only two officers are left in the class. The professor continues, using a dinner party at his friends house to illustrate a point he is making. We then cut to the dinner party which is being held in a modern bourgeois apartment.The guests are seated around the table on flushing toilets. They politely discuss various issues around the topic of defecation whilst publicly using the toilets that they are sitting on. When a guest is hungry, he excuses himself and retires to a private cubicle to eat food.We cut back to the police lecture. The two policeman go on duty where they stop a speeding motorist (Mr. Legendre) who is rushing to see his doctor. Mr. Legendre is eventually told by his doctor that he has cancer and offered a cigarette, he slaps his doctor and returns home. Once home, he tells his wife that nothing is wrong with him. They receive a phone call informing them that their daughter has disappeared from school.We now cut to the school where the teachers insist that the little girl has vanished despite the fact that she is physically present. Her disappearance is reported to the police, the girl is present but none of the adults admit to her presence. In this absurdist scene, she is there the adults are able to see and speak to her, yet they act as if she is missing.We follow one of the policemen, who is having his shoes shined. We then follow the man who is sitting next to him to the top of a tower block. This man is a sniper who randomly kills people in the streets below. He is arrested, found guilty and sentenced to death but leaves the courtroom to be treated as a celebrity.Mr. Legendre is called to see the Prefect of Police who returns the missing daughter. The prefect is about to read a letter explaining how the girl was found but is interrupted and leaves to visit a bar. In the bar he meets a woman who looks like his dead sister (we see a flashback in which he remembers his sister playing the piano, naked). He then receives a phone call from his dead sister, asking him to meet her at the mausoleum. When he visits the cemetery at night, he finds a telephone in the crypt by his sisters coffin; her hair is hanging out of the coffin. He is suddenly arrested for desecration by officers who refuse to believe that he is the Prefect of Police.The prefect is taken to his office, where a different man takes his place. The two men treat each other cordially and discuss crowd control as if they are acquainted. We see the animals in the zoo, the two police chiefs arrive and direct police control of an unseen riot. The film ends with a close-up shot of an ostrichs head.
    

The Phantom of Liberty


            
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The Borgias

Café Express

The Italian Connection

They Have Changed Their Face

Signore e signori, buonanotte


            Two men are riding a motorcycle through the streets of Rome, Italy. It is a week or two before Christmas. Fred (Marc Porel) is at the helm and Tony (Ray Lovelock) is riding pillion. At the same time, two other men on another motorcycle cruise through the streets. This pair of men attempt to rob a woman on the sidewalk by stealing her handbag, but she refuses to let go. They drag her along the street before she rams head first into a lamppost, killing her instantly. Still unable to work the handbag free, the second biker dismounts and viciously begins to beat the dead woman to force her to give up her handbag. Fred and Tony arrive to see the two assailants fleeing. Fred takes off after the two thugs while Tony stays behind to examine the woman. Finding her dead, Tony steals another motorcycle and ride off after the thugs.A long motorcycle chase ensues through the streets as many holiday shoppers jump out of the way. The only fatality is a seeing eye dog the thugs run over, leaving the blind owner hysterical. The chase leads through a café with Fred and his target wrecking the place. Going around the café, Tony, apparently stymied by an approaching traffic jam, rides OVER the cars, damaging several of them. After a game of chicken between the four men, Fred and Tony succeed in herding their quarry at speed into the back of a garbage truck. The first thug is gruesomely impaled in the crash, while the second is propelled through the cab and out into the street, injured but alive. Fred walks over to the second thug, and suddenly breaks his neck, killing him in cold blood.As the police arrive, Fred and Tony show their badges to them and reveal themselves to be officers of a "special squad" of police which carry out summary executions of criminals who would get way with crimes through legal technicalities. Fred and Tony report to their boss, known only as the Captain (Adolfo Celi), who knows full well of the excesses of his team. While the Captain plays lip-service to hauling them over the coals over their amoral and vicious tactics to capture or kill criminals, he couldn't care less since more and more thugs and common criminals continue to get away with murder, robbery, rape, and other violent crimes on legal technicalities.When Fred and Tony learn from an informant, named Morandi, about an illicit gambling joint located in the poor side of town, the two vicious officers travel over there one evening and proceed to torch all of the cars parked outside purely for revenge against the owners and the patrons who go there in the first place. Fred and Tony's exploits soon come under scrutiny by a high ranking inspector (Daniele Dublino) who is pressuring the Captain to have the elite, but troublesome team, disbanded. But the Captain soon learns about some things the inspector does in his off-time which leads Fred and Tony to take some action against the inspector.More exploits continue between the two amoral cops, whom are also roommates in a squalid apartment in a dangerous part of the city. When their once-a-week maid arrives one time to clean up the place, they proceed to taunt the poor woman by suggesting they have both had sex with her daughter. Norma (Silvia Dionisio), the attractive secretary to the Captain, is practically the den mother to them whom they like to chat up with during their breaks at the station. When Fred suggests to Norma he should have sex with her, she sarcastically replies that she would prefer a threesome (with Tony) for both of them would give her a few too many orgasms.Another day or two later, Tony and Fred are called to the scene of a hostage situation where the city police commissioner and several of his officials ask for their help to defuse a dangerous complication where three armed men have taken a middle-aged woman hostage in her house and threaten to kill her unless they receive a car outside the house. While Tony plays decoy by driving up to the house in a car, Fred sneaks out back on his motorcycle. When the thugs realize that they are being set up, they fall back into the house where Fred smashes through the back door on his motorcycle and shoots and kills two of the kidnappers. With the lead kidnapper holding the woman as a shield, Tony runs in through the front door and guns the last thug down.Another day later, Tony and Fred stake out the scene of a bank where a robbery of an armored truck will take place. The two cops don silenced pistols and kill all of the robbery gang from the getaway driver, to the lookouts, and the masked robbers themselves before slipping away.In between all of these adventures, Fred and Tony go after a noted crime boss, named Roberto Pasquini (Renato Salvatori), who runs most of the crime in the city. The two cops first worm their way into the apartment of Lena (Flavia Fabiani), Pasquini's niece. Fred makes a half-hearted attempt to question the woman, but cannot resist hitting her in the face. But this appears to rouse the disturbed woman and soon the two of them are having sex in the nearby bedroom where she tells them about Pasquini's hideout.Meanwhile, the corrupt inspector reports the findings of Fred and Tony to Pasquini until he is transfered to another department after his connection to the crime boss becomes suspect.Fred and Tony travel to a river barge where one of Pasquini's gambling casinos are following the tip given to them by Lena. While all of the attending gambles flee, Fred and Tony torture two of the thugs to find out where Pasquini's new hideout is. The thugs refuse to talk which prompts Fred and Tony to leave... and leave the thugs tied up. The two thugs then inform Pasquini who decides to take out the troublesome police officers.While Fred and Tony are at a quarry outside the city playfully shooting at tin cans for target practice, four of Pasquini's thugs arrive and a shootout begins where Fred and Tony sucessfully kill all of the thugs. Afterwords, the Captain tells Fred and Tony to go into hiding until Pasquini is caught or killed. Not used to being told what to do, Fred and Tony go back to their informant Morandi, who recently had one of his eyes gouged out by Pasquini's henchmen for his drug use and ratting him out to the two vice cops. Morandi decides to help Fred and Tony one last time before he goes into hiding for good.Morandi goes to Pasquini whom is hiding out on a yacht docked on the river to inform them about the progress of Fred and Tony. Morandi goes back and confirms to them that Pasquini is indeed on the yacht. When Fred and Tony return with Morandi, they find the boat deserted with only Pasquini's blond mistress on board. Anticipating that Morandi is in cahoots with the police, Pasquini and his chief henchman are on the docks and in a warehouse where they have the boat wired with explosives to blow it up with the two cops on board. However, they are saved with the arrival of the Captain who personally arrives and guns down both Pasquini and his henchmen before leaving. While Morandi and the girl flee the scene, Fred and Tony leave the yacht after hearing the gunshots and see the Captain driving away... aware that he just saved their hides again.As a final act of senseless violence, Fred and Tony blow up Pasquini's boat anyway simply because that its there and that confiscating it would not achieve anything.
    

Adolfo Celi

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